This invention relates generally to a mechanism for generating a data operand pair from sequentially input data by matching data identifier fields and, more particularly, to a firing processing unit in a data driven processor.
A conventional von Neuman data processing system, uses a control driven sequential processing method in which operands for a specific instruction are specified within the control word for that instruction. Consequently, the upper bound of processing speed in such a system is limited by the data transmission speed between central processing unit and memory unit and further it is difficult to achieve parallel processing. In order to overcome these difficulties, non-von Neuman data processing systems have been proposed. These non-von Neuman systems include data processing systems which use data driven type data processing methods. Some data driven type data processing systems using such methods have been implemented. For example, FIG. 17 shows a schematic diagram of such a data driven type data processing system. In this system, a data process such as an operation which combines two operands is achieved by first locating and pairing the two operands and then activating a data processing unit to complete the operation after the data has been paired. Referring to FIG. 17, the principle is applied, for example, to a dyadic operation for data 30 having an identifier field 29a and a value A and data 31 having an identifier field 29b and a value B. The operation is initiated by comparing the identifier fields 29a and 29b with the identifier field comparator unit 32 and generating a data pair 34 with the data pair generator unit 33 when the identifier fields indicate that the data pair are operands for the operation (this pairing process is hereinafter referred to as "firing"). Data processing unit 35 then performs the operation on the paired data. It is also possible that more than two data words must be associated in order to perform a particular operation. In this latter case the association of data words preparatory to performing an operation is still referred to as "firing".